Most Overrated AND Underrated At The Same Time?
 

This idea came to mind today. There are some bands out there who have huge (and often extremely annoying) fanbases, who will consistently make such claims as "band X is the greatest band eva loz!!!!1111", and who will hype up to almost God-like status each member of the band and their individual skills. This, unfortunately, tends to provoke a reaction from non-fans, who rather than hating on the fan-base, tend rather to do the total opposite of what the fans do, and instead just focus their attentions on hating the band, its music (that they've probably never even given a fair listen to), and mocking the band members.

What we end up with are *good* bands who, while on the one hand are extremely overrated by their fanboys, are also totally (and unfairly) underrated by non-fans.

The question is... how many bands of this sort can you think of? One that has to instantly spring to mind for me, is Tool.

Also, MAYBE Slipknot (who are a lot more than many give them credit for, like them or not).

um...hmm..possible nirvana or alice in chains?

hmm..possible nirvana or alice in chains?

Bright Eyes.

Hendrix as a guitarist also.

good topic

Dream Theater
Led Zeppelin?

Uhhh no there is a reason most people shit on them. They're atrocious.


I vote Velvet Underground. You only hear about people hating them or liking the one cd they did with Nico. Lou Reed is a genius.

You are doing exactly what this threads about!
that's..., how about keep the negatives locked inside.

I'd say wolfmother as a big one, they are either ripping off the old rock or they are helping keep it alive.

Dream Theater - Their fans praise them too much, but the detractors claim that they are too pretentious and want to show off their technical skills. Myself, I am a fan of DT, but I don't praise them anymore than they deserve.

Opeth - Same as above. Basically, all Progressive Metal discussions are two-sided conflicts.

Manowar - The fans truly 'embrace the brotherhood of metal and fight for the glory of steel', but the practical detractors call them cheesy...Again, I like Manowar, since I don't mind cheese at all, but I'd rather be a fan, than a 'Mighty Warrior of Steel singing DeMaio's praises'.

And thats just stupid, because music in itself is a very pretentious artform, as I see it, all music is pretentious, all good music anyway.

And showing off your technical skill is by no means a bad thing either, if you have it, then by all means use it.

No no, people dont hate Dream Theater for these reasons, they hate them because they just plain suck. :)

Eric Clapton

Beastie Boys

How about the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

Anyone think they can fit into this category?

I don`t see how a band who have made nothing but bland rubbish for the past 15 years can be considered underrated personally.

Again I think you're completely wrong.

Thats why I said 'Personally' :p:

I didn`t realise we`re giving out plaudits for churning out the same bland funk-lite stadium rock for nearly 2 decades , but there you go.

Bah.

Pffft. They've been through many stages - definitely not homogenous music.

In chronological order:

Raw funk rock fuelled with punk attitude - S/T, Freaky Styley, Uplift Mofo Party Plan
More mature funk mixed in with other styles - Mother's Milk, BSSM
Psychedelic funk - One Hot Minute
Plain rock - Californication
More atmospheric rock - By the Way
Mixture - Stadium Arcadium

Now had you stopped there I would have agreed with you. My summery for the rest would be........
One Hot Minute - Yawnathon
Californication - One of the safest dullest middle of the road albums it`s ever been my misfortune to hear
By the Way - Had given up on them by this point , what i`d heard of it didn`t inspire confidence. People who like them much more than I ever did just confirmed what i`d thought.
Stadium Arcadium - Had to listen to this the whole way through at work once. I hope I never experience this ever again

:)

i want my 20 dollars back for SA

IMO everything from S/T to BSSM is essentially what Seltzer said.

One Hot Minute - Some great musicianship especially in Fleas part, but the overall result is a very mixed one, its a good thing that this was the only album Navarro played on.

Californication - While this album clearly lacks the funk (save a few tracks) I think its a great record, oh well, call me a sucker for mellow rock if you will, I think this would have made a great swan song if they just stopped from here.

By The Way - Essentially, this is probably the weakest album they have ever done, they took what made Californication great and started turning it into their signature sound, which I really dont think was a great idea, after Californication they should have went straight back to the "funk-punk" sound, but whatever, who am I to decide what style of music a band should be playing? I still like some of the songs.

Statium Arcadium - I haven't actually heard the whole album, but from listening to the singles it really seems like I'm not missing much.

You're not missing anything, SA stole 5 precious minutes of my broadband quota. It's worse than By the Way because theres 2 discs of it, and who the hell picks the singles for the radio? Because of all 30 odd songs, they picked some of the crappest of the crap. Not to mention the title track is probably the most boring track of the lot.

Yes, given the talent in the Chili's, their last album was a huge disappointment for me.

And not to be completely off topic, aren't all (musically) good, popular bands both overrated and underrated?

They picked the poppiest songs for the radio. Which makes perfect sense.

To some extent though what I had in mind in particular for this thread was those bands with whom this is done to a FAR greater extent than other bands. Bands such as Tool, and others that people have brought up since the thread opener.

Again, my view is that the main reason for the extreme underrating aspect is precisely the same as the reason for the extreme overrating - the fanatical fanbases. People hate to hear about how some band they don't and never really have listened to is "way better than all other bands in the world", blahdey blah blah. So they end up automatically trying to find reasons to hate that band, and jump on a bandwaggon.

I considered the whole lot fairly poppy and radio savvy. She's Only 18 was probably one of my favourite tracks on there and I wouldn't have been suprised to see that as a single, or at least a better pick than Tell Me Baby or that Hey Oh song, along with several other tracks.

Tool is the best example in my opinion too.

Pantera. SOAD.

I'm not gonna lie, I don't give SOAD much credit because of the hardcore fans. The more they hype them up the cheesier I think SOAD are.

Aw, c'mon! NOBODY barfs all over the stage better than they do! :laughing:

Good choice on your part.

Especially back in his 60's heyday, many of his fans acted like he was God or something. Which of course provoked a backlash, causing those who came to dislike him to overlook the fact that he was quite a talent.

I don't consider him the greatest of all time, but he certainly was one of the greats.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...d_Graffiti.jpg

WTF? All music isn't pretentious. Some bands really 'feel' their music. You can sense it in their songs.

And yes, showing off isn't bad, but the band members of Dream Theater do tend to put technical playing ahead of actual song 'likeability factor' (as I call it) at times. But its not often, as the haters think. They don't suck, they are a talented band who have released several great albums.

The only flaw is, you can get bored of them soon.

"Feel" is a very superficial thing, you can say a band plays with passion, and I'm sure they probably do, but you can't prove it, things like "feeling" are unmeasurable and you can't determine weither someone has "feeling" or not, its a rather lousy criteria for being a good band.

Bingo.

Besides, when people talk about bands being "pretentious", they very rarely mean that in the sense of not "feeling" their music! The sense of "pretentious" generally intended when bands are labeled as such, is that the band assume a (usually high) degree of self-importance and dignity.

And that doesn't make a band bad, either; it just makes them a bunch of pretentious *#@%s.:laughing:

If that is the definition, I suggest bands like Edguy or Gamma Ray, who are never too self-absorbed and even take jokes about themselves in a light hearted manner. Edguy frontman Tobias Sammet has the weirdest sense of humor I have known; He wrote a song about him having sex with a stewardess in the toilet on a plane bound for Brazil, while it was crashing.

That being said, I think Edguy fit the 'overrated and underrated' description too. There are some fans who claim the band to be legendary and Tobi to be Power Metal's best vocalist...I say, the band is brilliant and clever, but they are very young. And the vocals, although good, are average.

Theater of Salvation can be considered as a Power Metal masterpiece though. And Tobias wrote it when he was only 22 yrs. old. Good stuff.

stairway to heaven!!!

I hate it BTW but some worship it!!

It wouldn't surprise me if after playing the same thing every single day for 7 months, even the bands don't feel their own music.

I think Opeth fits into this category. They have a huge fanbase, but that leads them to have plenty of detractors. Why?

1.) Many metal fans hate any new metal band which is very popular.
2.) They simply do not understand Opeth. As elitist/snobbish as that may sound, it's true. If you have a band that fuses prog rock, psychedelia and death metal, you're going to come out with an unusual sound. The average death metal fan will think it's strange because he isn't accustomed to prog/psychedelia - he's judging a band which is a fusion of a few genres by the standards of one genre (dm). So, he's not going to understand what all the fuss is about and will probably react negatively.

That's my understanding of it anyway.

radiohead...

My Chemical Romance. Huuuge fanbase, mostly little girls who overrate them to extremes... then there's the many many haters.

Nickelback fit here. All dedicated music fans think they're the worst most insipid act in all recording history, while the general population almost can't live without them.

EDIT: But hang on, I don't think I'm getting the original point. This is meant to be about who is most overrated and underrated by real full-time music fans, isn't it. So maybe Nickelback and My Chemical Romance etc. don't count. Yeah, I reckon they don't.

Ah, now the psychedelia might not be instantly obvious, but Mikael Akerfeldt was quite influenced by psychedelia... he worships it. Like him, I scavenge around for the hidden psychedelic gems from 67-72. It plays quite an influence on his writing style, and you might not pick it up unless you listen to psychedelia. And that's the same with Per Wiberg... it's worth mentioning that he's also in Spiritual Beggars, a stoner doom band.

Blackwater Park itself is the name of an obscure psychedelia band.

easily, its MCR. i was so sick of hearing about them that i started to hate them. now that i have actually heard there music, i have decided that they are an OK or decent band

I think the most overrated is fall out boy's bassist

I actually exclude that Nirvana,or any other bands with the same style.

That's genre problem,I just dont like it